Knowing how to play songs that are popular and recognizable is something every novice guitar player wants to do. Being able to impress your friends by playing one of your favorite tunes is an amazing feeling. I’m sure everyone has fantasized about being a huge rock star and playing in front of thousands of screaming fans at least once in their life.

Most of us won’t ever get the chance to play in front of thousands of people but it can be just as satisfying to learn some songs and play them in front of a smaller crowd. Eventually this will lead to you creating your own original songs, but for now it’s good practice to learn songs from other musicians. This will really help you understand some of the things involved in crafting a good song. Read more

Learning to play guitar takes lots of practice, patience and skill as well. In fact, according to experts the guitar is among the instruments that are very tough to learn and truly master it. Many people first thinks that they can pick a guitar, a book, few guitar songs and teach themselves. But once they find that it is not as easy as they thought, they become discouraged and leave it. But that’s not the way to learn it, you can learn to play guitar easily if you know how to start. Read more

So you want to learn guitar? Why not start off with one of the all-time greats, which is also a song on our ‘easy guitar songs for beginners‘ list. “Enter Sandman” is a song by Californian heavy metal band Metallica. Produced by legendary producer, Bob Rock. Enter Sandman was released in 1991 as the lead single and the opening track of the band’s eponymous Black album. Kirk Hammett, Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield wrote the song, and Hetfield scribbled the lyrics. Read more

You’ve got a strap. You’ve got a sweet guitar. You’ve got a gig. Frankly, it’s only natural that while in the middle of a jam you might feel the urge to swing your guitar around your body, a tradition that goes all the way back to vaudeville*, an expected part of any high octane performance. If you’re not swinging that guitar, you might as well be a roadie or, worse, a drummer. Read more

Learning guitar is a common passion among the youngsters. It is not so tough to learn to play guitar if you follow and practice the lessons properly. Chords are the most important and fundamental thing a learner should focus on. Chords are proper combination of notes which are formed in various patters and after strumming it creates harmonious sound.

If you have started learning guitar you should focus on guitar chords, it is the basic point to start playing popular songs. Even if you have learned limited number of chords you can play wide varieties of songs easily. If you have command on chords you will enjoy learning and playing guitar. With proper knowledge of chords a beginner can start playing some known rock songs Read more

You have just started to play guitar or you are still learning it and having a hard time learning it. Don’t worry even the guitar geniuses went through same phase once. You can achieve success here by choosing simple songs to practice but you will also need to have proper skills to play those guitar songs correctly. Your selection plays a deciding role in you success or failure here, so it is important to have basic knowledge of guitar when you go for more difficult techniques Read more

Young, Dumb, and Full of Strum — Many of us were inspired to pick up a guitar and play because we were turned on by an advanced, experienced player we heard in our formative years. For some it was Jimi Hendrix, for other it was Eddie Van Halen, still others may have latched on to Tony Rice. In their effort to match the chops, skills, and solos of these players, many students forget that these guys play the way they do because of fully mastering some fundamental parts of music and guitar playing and this is what gave them the ability to go as far as they did. This article (and accompanying video) are the first in a series I am doing for Gear Vault that is intended to identify these crucial basics and help you improve your playing from the foundation level on up. I have taught hundreds of students over the years and have observed that the ones that take the time to really get a handle on these basic skills are the ones that achieve their playing goals most effectively.

Let’s Learn Open Chord Rhythm

The first topic in this series is rhythm. Rhythm is the most elemental aspect of music and is the thing that holds the whole band together. The most basic kind of rhythm guitar playing is open chord strumming. The first position ‘cowboy’ chords are often the first thing many of us learn when we start playing and some players never really go past them, especially if they are trying to be singer/songwriters. One of the most important skills a new or advancing guitarist can develop is the ability to strum these guitar chords in a solid and steady way. The key to this skill is the basic down/up eighth note, or pendulum, strum.

The pendulum strum is really a simple pattern of down/up/down/up/down/up/down/up across a measure of eighth notes in 4/4 time and is counted 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and, or 1+2+3+4+. The whole idea is that your picking hand goes down on the number and up on the ‘and’, swinging back and forth like the pendulum in a grandfather clock. You can see me demonstrate this in the video and get an idea of what it sounds like. I play the open G, C, Em, and D chords on the clip but you can do this from any chord you know to any other chord you know when you practice. The big thing to strive for is keeping it even and steady, as that is what you will need to be to play well with other musicians or even deliver a solo song convincingly. Most listeners don’t notice if we drop a clam in some blazing solo but your grandma can tell when your time is herky-jerky. Go as slow as you need to to keep the rhythm strong and make your chord changes with no dead air in between.

Once you get the hang of the pendulum, you start to realize that most of the strummed rhythm patterns we hear are based on this idea and that the key to making different rhythms happen is selectively hitting and missing the strings on different eighth notes within the original pattern. Get really good at this and learning all those ‘strum and sing’ type of songs is suddenly really easy. Neglect this basic skill and you will have a gap in your groove thing. You will know you are getting somewhere with this when drummers and bass players start liking you a whole lot better. Now get in the shed, start working it out, and watch this space for more goal-oriented guitar lessons. Peace.

Few dictionary entries are as subjective, or as relative, as the word “easy” (adj., not hard or difficult; requiring no great labor or effort). This is especially true when it comes to music, and for some reason, for the guitar. Some people will find the guitar to be easy to play right from the outset. Others cannot fathom even the most rudimentary of concepts – even if they are already music-savvy and proficient in other instruments. Read more

Beginner guitar chords for easy reference

Below is a free printable guitar chords chart with all the basic guitar chords any beginning guitar player should learn. I highly encourage you to print or download this chart for your reference. Whether you play acoustic or electric guitar, this guitar chords chart will help you.

Click to enlarge and print this Guitar Chords Chart!

Iron Man by Black Sabbath is one of my 5 easy guitar songs because of the simple chord progression. Not only is this song easy to play, it sounds powerful. This song is the beginning of metal guitar. Since the songs release in 1970, a lot of notable bands have re-made a cover of “Iron Man.” Iron Man has also been used in many TV show, films and, or course, sporting events. Since the 1976 release of Black Sabbath’s ‘We Sold Our Soul for Rock ‘n’ Roll‘ album, “Iron Man“, by no surprise, has been included in subsequent Black Sabbath greatest hits compilations. Even the sound track of the 2008 comic book film, Iron Man, included the “Iron Man” song. This song should be on everyone’s favorite “easy guitar songs to learn” list. Below is the guitar tab for Iron Man. This is a public guitar tab transcribed, but not original. There are many ways to play this song, and I believe Tony Iommi has played it different ways while performing live. Now stop reading and start learning this guitar song!